


oh, it won't get better (that doesn't mean it's gonna get any worse)

by iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Could Be Read as Peter/Thor If You're So Inclined, Drinking, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Let Peter Quill Say Fuck 2k19, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-05-14 10:03:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19271002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid/pseuds/iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid
Summary: Peter knows a self destructive spiral when he sees it. He’s spent the last decade or so around some of the most self destructive assholes in the damn galaxy, so ofcoursehe knows what it looks like. Across every alien species the signs are all the same, and Thor ain’t no different.[ Based on the tumblr prompt, “Stop telling me you’re okay.” ]





	oh, it won't get better (that doesn't mean it's gonna get any worse)

**Author's Note:**

> i posted this in response to a tumblr prompt meme "stop telling me you're okay" + mcu, sent by the lovely [dysfunctionalmagpie](https://dysfunctionalmagpie.tumblr.com/), but uh, i got carried away and wrote almost 3k words. whoops? this is officially the first thing i've written that acknowledges endgame as canon lmao, and of course it's just..... dudes crying over what happened because, like, same
> 
> i just love peter quill with every ounce of my heart and, apparently, i like writing him comforting norse gods. hmm.
> 
> title is from [Avocado, Baby](https://open.spotify.com/track/62iNIsckErsDyuaZUvvJMV?si=p6_DfEwiRWmxriNrYEZXdA) because i'm obsessed with that song right now and i couldn't be assed to come up with another title tbh

 

“Thor?” Peter asks, rapping a knuckle on the door to his quarters on the ship. “You in there, bud?”

A grunt sounds from the other side. Somewhere between  _sure, come on in,_ and  _go away now, please._ Peter’s never been too good at nonverbal communication, but hey, it confirms he’s in his room at least.

“Cool. Uh, we need you outside.”

Another grunt. And Peter’s still no expert, but that one was definitely closer to  _go away now, please,_  except probably without the please.

“C’mon, Princess Sparkles. Up and at ‘em.”

This time it’s silence from the other side, silence and a faint creak from Thor’s bed. Peter gives him to the count of ten, takes a breath, and puts his hand on the door latch.

“I’m coming in,” he says. “So if you’re buck ass naked, now’s about the time to—”

The door wrenches open before he can finish his sentence, and then there’s Thor, standing right in front of him with a Contraxian beer in his hand and something way stronger than that on his breath, frowning and eyeing him down with that mismatched blue-and-brown stare of his.

Peter drops his hand, and then for lack of anything better to do he plants both of them on his hips.

“So, uh… you’re not naked. That’s good.”

Thor’s brows knit together, like he wants to be angry but he’s still a little too tired or a little too buzzed to really get there.

“Already scarred enough for one week,” Peter continues, because he doesn’t do awkward silences, especially when they’re with super powerful demigods who are trying to intimidate him into shutting up, and  _especially_  when he is technically still the captain of said demigod.  _He’s_  in charge, damn it,  _he_  gets to decide when there’s an awkward silence and when there’s not. “C’mon. We need you outside. Like, outside outside. Not just outside of your room, but that’d be a good start.”

Thor lifts the Contraxian beer can for a sip. “What’s happened?”

Peter shoots him a look. “You can’t just come with me?”

At that, Thor only raises an eyebrow, and Peter huffs.

 _“Fine._  Engine short-circuited a few minutes ago,” Peter tells him. “It ain’t gonna start back up without a jump, but it just so happens that we—” he pokes a finger to the center of Thor’s chest and ignores the pointed look he gets for it — “happen to have a dude on the team who can survive in space and generate sparks with his fingers. So let’s go, we’re dead in the water ‘til the engine’s running again.”

Thor takes another hefty gulp from his beer. “You don’t need me to jumpstart the ship.”

“Uh… yeah, we do.”

“You have plenty of suits for the express purpose of doing repairs from outside the ship. Any of those would more than suffice. You don’t need me.”

Peter deflates a little. Damn it. Because yeah, that technically is true, and Rocket had said as much, but Peter had been pretty adamant that Thor should do it. For one thing, it’s easier that way. None of them like the way those suits chafe, and Thor doesn’t even  _need_  a suit, and he wouldn’t even need any damn tools. All the electricity they need is right there in his veins.

But for another…

Well. Peter knows a self destructive spiral when he sees it. He’s spent the last decade or so around some of the most self destructive assholes in the damn galaxy, so of  _course_  he knows what it looks like. Across every alien species the signs are all the same, and Thor ain’t no different.

“Just come and help us out, would you?” Peter asks. “It ain’t gonna take long.”

Thor downs the last of his beer, stifles a burp with the back of his hand, and then turns without another word and traipses right back into his room.

Peter tries, and fails, not to get a little pissed off at that.

 _“Hey,”_  he says, stepping into the room, hands on his hips again. “Come on, man. You can’t just sit around all—”

“I see what you’re doing,” Thor cuts him off, his voice low as he pries another beer from the six pack on his nightstand, “and it’s admirable. Truly, I appreciate the thought. But you don’t need to create miscellaneous little tasks to make me feel useful, Quill. I’m—”

“Okay, first of all, I didn’t  _create_  anything. The engine shorted ‘cause Rocket was being an idiot and gutted the alternator to wire it into one of his bombs. Scout’s honor. And—”

“And I’m certain he would be more than happy to don a spacesuit and address the problem himself—”

“And  _second_  of all,” Peter presses, ignoring the interruption. “You need to get the hell out of this room, man. You gotta stop wallowing in—”

“I am not  _wallowing,_  I’m… drinking.”

“Drinking.”

“Yes,” Thor answers with a shrug, lifting his beer in demonstration. He opened it about ten seconds ago and it already looks half empty. “Drinking is not wallowing. I assure you, I’m—”

“If the next words out of your mouth are either  _okay_  or  _fine_  or any goddamn variation of that, I swear to God I’m gonna blow a gasket. Stop telling me you’re okay, man.”

Thor shrugs again. “Why wouldn’t I be? The Universe has been put to rights, and the one responsible for it has—”

“Died, yeah. Everyone that got dusted is back, and Thanos is dead.  _Whoopdie doo,”_  Peter says, glaring, and it doesn’t slip his notice that Thor’s jaw tightens at the mention of Thanos, dead or not. “But your friend still died fighting him, and you still went five years with everybody gone, and  _then_  not even everybody got to come back, right? A whole bunch of your people, your friends, that brother you were talking about? They didn’t get to come back, did they?”

Thor glares right back at him, and the hair on Peter’s arms is starting to stand on end, static hanging in the air like it does right before lightning hits. But Peter holds his ground and stays right where he is.

“Take care,” Thor grits out through his teeth, “how you  _speak,_  Quill.”

“Yeah, there it is,” Peter says, lips twitching in half a smirk, but getting a rise out of Thor is the sort of satisfaction that sours real quick. “It pisses you off, right? It  _should._  Because you’re not  _okay_ —” he pokes Thor in the chest again — “and you haven’t  _been_  okay—” another jab — “because Thanos killed a shitload of people you cared about and then he fucked off to the next place he could get an Infinity Stone, and when you finally caught up to him it didn’t  _matter—”_

“I’m—”

“You’re not fine!” Peter shouts. “You’re not! I know the signs, man! Holing up in your room instead of spending time with anybody? Check. Reckless self endangerment? Yeah, I’m not blind. Check. Downing enough hard liquor to drown an Abilisk? Double check. Running away—”

“I did not run away—”

“Yes, you did, and you  _are,_  just by being here with us, and that’s not the goddamn point,” Peter insists, voice rising because — well, he hadn’t come here to yell at Thor, but he guesses that’s just what’s happening now. Their nerves are all a little frayed these days. “You’re allowed to run away, because you sure as hell had a lot to run away  _from,_  but the fact that you  _did_  just proves my point that you’re not alright!”

“You don’t under—”

“Understand?” Peter cuts him off, eyes widening. “I don’t  _understand?_  Oh, sure, yeah, no, you’re right, I just don’t get it, huh? No.” He shakes his head. “Screw that. That’s bullshit, man. Total bullshit. Because you lost everything five years ago, and that  _sucks,_  but I lost Gamora  _last goddamn week._ And yeah, there’s another version of her somewhere in the galaxy, and yeah, I’m sure as hell gonna try to find her because I can’t  _not,_  and yeah, that Gamora is out there and still alive while Thanos isn’t and she’s  _free,_  and that’s awesome, but that doesn’t change the fact that  _my_  Gamora never got to have that!” His voice cracks, and he jabs a thumb into his own chest. “It doesn’t change the fact that my Gamora  _died,_  and it doesn’t change the fact that she’s still dead and she had to die all alone and with a guy that  _terrified_  her and that I wasn’t…”

He forces himself to stop — or the lump in his throat forces him to stop, either way — and he ducks his head, pinches the bridge of his nose, tries to get his shoulders to stop heaving. At some point in his tirade he’d let a few tears slip, and he sniffs and scrubs them away with the back of his hand.

“My point is,” Peter says, resuming his glare even though it’s got to have lost some venom now that his eyes are all shiny with tears. “I know you’re not okay, because  _newsflash,_  none of us are! What happened to all of us was a  _huge_ steaming pile of bullshit, and what happened to you was, too. So don’t tell me I don’t understand, don’t tell me I don’t get it, and don’t even  _think_  about telling me you’re okay when we all know you’re not.”

Thor tightens his jaw again, and for a second, Peter thinks he really hasn’t gotten through to him at all except for making him a little angry.

But then he speaks, and Peter can hear plain as day the fact that Thor’s about  _this_  close to crying, too.

Shit.

“You don’t understand,” Thor says again, low as a whisper, “because it was not your actions that led to the destruction of half the Universe. I — I  _had_  him.” He gives a bitter sort of smile, one that drops away after half a second. “Did you know that?”

The brief confused look from Peter is, apparently, all Thor needs to continue.

“I drove Stormbreaker into his chest,” Thor says, tapping a few fingers to his sternum as he backs up a step and falls gracelessly to sit on the edge of his mattress. “Mm-hmm. Right here. If I’d gone for the head, he’d have died before he ever had the chance to snap his fingers. But I didn’t. And the Universe paid the price.”

And, well… shit.

Peter sighs, deep and heavy, and he turns and sits down next to him.

“I wanted him to suffer,” Thor continues. “I wanted him to  _know_  that he died the same way he’d killed Heimdall, as vengeance for him and for—” he gulps — “for Loki, and all the rest of my people that he slaughtered. And because of that he slaughtered trillions more. Because of me.”

“Dude.” Peter shakes his head, sighing again. “That is  _also_  bullshit.”

Before Thor can say anything to that, Peter reaches over and plucks the can of beer from his hands, and he takes a long swig before handing it back.

“We almost had him, too,” Peter tells him. “Bet you didn’t know that, either, huh? Yup. Ask Mantis, or Drax, or Nebula, they’ll tell you. We were this close. Then I found out he… you know, I found out what he did. Found out that  _shitstain_  killed her for…” He shakes his head again, gulps around the lump in his throat. “Anyway, I lost it. Punched him in the face a few times. Screwed everything up.”

He takes the beer again — he’s not actually sure why he gave it back in the first place — and he downs the last few gulps so he can turn the empty can over in his hands.

“But you know what? If I could go back, and I could do that whole fight over again, you know what I’d change?”

Thor hums, not looking at him.

“Not a goddamn thing,” Peter says. “Seriously. I wouldn’t. He might have still ended up winning, who knows, and either way, everybody he dusted came back, right? Only thing that would’ve changed is that I wouldn’t’ve gotten to punch him in the face. And it sounds to  _me_  like you got him back pretty good, too.” He nudges Thor with an elbow. “Ax to the chest, huh? That must’ve hurt like a son of a bitch.”

Thor nods. “Cut off his head, too. After.”

Peter grins, and he wraps an arm around Thor’s shoulders and tugs him close in a one-armed hug. And like a good captain, he doesn’t say a word about the fact that Thor sniffles a little bit and scrubs at his nose. He just rubs his hand up and down Thor’s arm.

“You got him, man,” Peter tells him. “You  _got_  him, and then you helped bring back everybody he dusted. Hell, I’m still…”

He stops himself, though, from saying that he’s still holding out hope that maybe, just maybe, the guy that snapped everybody back might have snapped back some of the other people Thanos killed that day, too. Maybe. He’s not putting any bets on it, but he’s sure as hell swinging by Vormir at least once just to be sure.

But is it better to give Thor a little bit of hope? Or is it better to— well, not really rip off the band-aid, since it’s long since been ripped off, but maybe it’s better not to put the band-aid back on, just to maybe have to rip off all over again.

Whatever. It’s a bad metaphor. The point is—

“Look, you lost a whole lot,” Peter says, deciding for now that he’ll stick to the things he knows for sure. “I get that. We all get that. But you didn’t lose everything. You still got all your friends back on Earth, and all your people that are still in New Asgard. And you got us, now, too. And me and Rocket and everybody, we’re not going anywhere. Promise.”

He gives Thor a little squeeze.

And he must have said something right, because then Thor sniffs and turns toward him and returns the hug with a  _vengeance,_  wraps both arms around his ribs and tugs him in and practically lifts his butt off the mattress.

“Woah—  _easy,_  buddy, I’m not as—” Peter coughs, smiling and awkwardly patting Thor’s shoulders — “not as durable as you. Easy.”

Thor loosens his grip just a smidge, then unwinds his arms from around Peter entirely and claps one hand firmly on his shoulder, swiping at his cheeks with the other.

That mismatched blue-and-brown stare is back on him again. His smile is small and sad but  _earnest_  in a way that Peter’s not really used to seeing from Thor. It’s a good look on him, and one that seems so natural that Peter can’t help wondering what Thor must’ve been like, before all this shit hit the fan. He’s only seen glimpses of that guy in the past week, but maybe, he thinks, he might see more of him as the weeks go on.

“Thank you,” Thor says. “You’re right. I haven’t been… I’m not alright.”

And that’s a good step, ain’t it? Isn’t that supposed to be a step, admitting that it’s not alright? Peter’s pretty sure that’s a good step. Feels like one, anyway.

“Then you’re in good company,” Peter responds with a shrug, and then he slaps his palms on his thighs and stands up. “Now, come on. Are you gonna go out there and light that engine up, or do I have to put on one of those super chafe-y space suits and do it myself? I wasn’t just blowing smoke earlier, I  _really_  would rather you do it.”

Thor smiles again. It’s still a small one but just as earnest as the first, and he nods, accepting Peter’s outstretched hand to help him up even though he almost definitely doesn’t need it.

“I could do that.”

It’s not perfect, Peter thinks. It’s not like Thor or  _any_  of them are suddenly okay now. Thor still lost a ton of people he loved and Peter still feels Gamora’s absence like a horrible gaping chasm in his chest and Rocket still can’t let any one of them out of his sight for more than a few minutes at a time without sparking the beginnings of a panic attack.

They’re not fine, but Thor leaves the rest of his six pack behind as the two of them make their way toward the airlock.

It’s a start.

 

 


End file.
